France at CERN

01 Apr 1993

Geneva, 1 April 1993. From 30 March to 2 April, forty-five French companies will be taking part in an industrial exhibition where they will be featuring their products in areas of direct interest to the researchers, engineers and technicians at CERN1, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. The exhibition, organized by France's Ministry for Research and Space Affairs and the French Committee for Foreign Trade Exhibitions, will be visited on 1 April by Jean-Michel Yolin, the Ministry's Director for Innovation, Technology and Regional Development. CERN's management will be represented by Giorgio Brianti, Associate Director for Future Accelerators, and Christian Roche, Associate Director for Forecasting and Planning. Georges Charpak, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992, will be among those attending.

CERN is host several times a year to exhibitions arranged by one of its Member States. Today, as in 1983 and 1986, it is France's turn to publicize French companies, their products and industrial know-how in many and varied fields such as control and testing, measurement, detection and regulation, mechanical engineering, vacuum technology, refrigeration, superconductivity, and electrical and electronic hardware. There will also be some twenty lectures on these subjects during the exhibition.

Many of the exhibitors were actively involved in the first construciion phase of LEP (the large electron-positron collider) and continue to bring their expertise to the developments which will eventually double the energy of the LEP machine.

At the moment CERN is actively embarking on an ambitious new project, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which is attracting a significant number of collaborators from the scientific community. Many French physicists are involved in the project, which has the firm backing of France. The participation of so many French companies in the CERN exhibition is proof of their eagerness to cooperate in the project which will call on the most advanced technology and enable European scientists to remain in the forefront of research into the ultimate structure of matter.

Suppliers benefit from the Organization's reputation based on the high standards it demands. CERN is thus a point of reference for hi-tech products both on the European and international fronts. A study carried out among companies supplying CERN with hi-tech equipment shows that they have, on average, achieved turnovers of three to four times the value of their original contracts from the sale of products based on technologies developed at CERN.

Footnote(s)

1. CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, has its headquarters in Geneva. Its Member States are Austria, Belgium, the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic are negotiating separate membership agreements), Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Israel, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Yugoslavia (status suspended after UN embargo, June 1992), the European Commission and Unesco have observer status.